Bethesda Have Rights To STALKER, Claims Galyonkin

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RussianUkrainian blogger and marketing man Sergey Galyonkin – who tipped off the closure of the STALKER 2 project earlier this year – has claimed that Bethesda now have the rights to make a publish a STALKER game. They apparently do not have rights to the extended universe. GSC owner Sergei Grigorovich has not sold the brand, but apparently Bethesda could now make a game based on the property with their own technology. We’ll report more on this as we get it.

Even better, the people who make Gamebryo went bust in 2010. The tech was then acquired later that year by another company.
It boggles my mind that Bethesda outright lied about the engine in Skyrim being a different one to that used in Oblivion / Fallout 3 / New Vegas and got away with it.link to tvtropes.org;

Actually, I find Bethesda’s games a lot more rough around the edges than Stalker. The way you move in Morrowind and on… it’s not… natural. You sort of “glide” through the world, with crude animations that feel like they have no impact. Beautiful worlds, but the physics are horrible

+1 for this. I really can’t picture Bethesda retaining any of the vast eastern charm of this game, it could be a sad end (then again, it could be a less sad end than the studio just going bankrupt without any game, but I somewhat doubt it)

I don’t think it’s a problem with Bethesda so much as a love of the origional dev – at least that is it for me. I like Beth, I enjoy their games but I liked the way GSC made stalker and I don’t believe beth will replicate the way GSC did things that made stalker so unique.

I love Bethesda. I honestly believe that most people who flame them do so just because Beth are very big now. While they still have some way to go with writing, their ability to craft beautiful, deep, rich in lore and content worlds is really unparalleled. Nobody does what they do, and while Fallout 3 wasn’t a good Fallout sequel, it still was a superb game in its own right.

STALKER though doesn’t fit their agenda. It’s just not a game the kind of game they should and are capable of making. It’s just… wrong, it’s like letting Valve make Myst 6. Valve are awesome, but come on!

On a side note, anyone considered that maybe Bethesda DOES NOT PLAN ON MAKING A STALKER GAME? Cause you know, they are publishers as well as developers, maybe they want to give the IP to another studio. Looking through what they have available I still don’t see anyone who could do the series justice, but still, putting it out there.

I understand, of course, its a very special game and everybody has a special love for it, for the essence of the game

But, I have a problem with this nostalgic / closed minded mentality, dont get me wrong, I dont want a shitty game, but people should have the chance to try stuff out of their comfort zone,
for example, epic making that fortnite game, its not Gears of War, but it looks like it could be good, just a quick example that came to my mind,
I think actually it would be nice if studios and publishers risked more with different generes,
of course I understand you dont want that experiment to be done with a beloved series like Stalker but still,

on the other hand, what you said, I was just saying that in some other comment, Bethesda is mostly now a publisher, their own internal teams are working on Elder Scrolls stuff so if they make something with Stalker they will do it with another studio,
for example the guys that are making Dishonored or the guys that are making Prey 2, those guys could surely handle a challenge like Stalker I’m sure of that

I played Oblivion, then Skyrim, then finally played Morrowind, in that order.

Oblivion was alright, and I had nothing else to do with my wisdom teeth out.

I didn’t even like Skyrim when it launched. It felt incredibly bland and hollow. It has three stats, and useless perks. It’s barely an RPG. I’d put it on Dragon Age 2 level of rehashed garbage.

Morrowind was clearly the best of the three. It was the most imaginative, most developed, most thought out.

Just because you think people are jumping on a bandwagon doesn’t mean they don’t have reasons for disliking these things. Stop associating disliking of a product/company you apparently worship with the idea that everyone that does so is the grandchildren of hitler. That’s unreasonable.

Saying that perks are useless and that the game has 3 stats is unreasonable, mostly because it’s not true. Saying that the world is hollow when there is so much lore and story hidden behind each and every stone, from the pretty like a picture Riverwood to the dark and haunted Markath is unreasonable for me as well, but that’s subjective. Do note though that I was talking about the people reacting as if it’s the end of the world and this would have been the absolute worst thing that could have happened to Stalker. As if Bethesda are like the Uwe Boll of the gaming industry. And that IS unreasonable.

BTW bashing me for liking a studio’s work is not only unreasonable, it’s also rude and immature. Good job.

Hollow seems to fit in a few ways at least. Skyrim didn’t have the depth that Morrowind did in many aspects. ‘Dragon Age 2 level’ is a bridge so far it’s not even in the same state. Skyrim may have lacked depth compared Morrowind but so does just about everything and it still had a very wide breadth to it that almost everything lacks. Dragon Age 2 had neither. There’s no comparison, no reasonable one at any rate. That you would try to compare the two says you’re either biased for some reason or you’re just looking to get a rise out of people. Considering you make absurd comparisons to the Nazis as if others have used strong, biased language to attack you, and thinly veiled ‘fanboy’ insults when no one else has done so and you’ve no cause to I’d be inclined to go with the latter.

Not bug free, but at least nothing above minor issues in the main quest line and primary mechanics. Skyrim still feels like a release from somewhere between Alpha and Beta. I like it, but the bugs are so egregious… I bet they could nail down a fair bit of it by just simply reviewing code and looking over scripts manually to see if anything looks “funky” using different perspectives.

Bethesda stuff looks like candyworld, plays like candyworld. It is northern American standard fantasy, including horned helmets, winged shoulder pauldrons and a puritan morality that bores the hell out of me.
Pink flamingos, suburban bourgoise horror. Girls who scream hysterically “He’ soooo cute”. Bethesda.
The best thing they can do with Stalker is making it disappear.

Bethesda just doesn’t make great games anymore. They make mediocre games with a big world to keep you busy. I think Stalker is beyond their ability. Stalker needs good, visceral combat. You can’t have the stat based crap they have in FO3 and Skyrim. You can’t have tiers of guns.

You need real fear, not copy pasted environments. You need moments like X-18 where you are hesitant to proceed. You know something nasty is down there and it will rough. You need moments where you run into a controller and scramble for cover. In stalker you feel genuinely threatened by the world.

Look at Fallout 3 it had none of the charm from the previous Fallout games. You do that to Stalker and it just isn’t Stalker anymore. That weirdness, that alien feeling, it is part of the Stalker experience.

Really think about what the last truly great game Bethesda made. Do you have a big desire to go back to play Oblivion again, Fallout 3 again? They make big worlds that keep you busy,.

I, too, just completed a replay of Fallout 3 and enjoyed myself. Before you ask, yes, I am aware that it is not in the spirit of the original Fallout games. I still find it enjoyable, however.

The anti-Bethesda bandwagon is starting to get ridiculous. Yea, I get it. Not everyone enjoys their games. And that’s completely fine. Good on all of us for having an opinion. But this is clearly entering “It’s-Hip-To-Hate-On-X” territory now. RPS comment threads regularly go off-topic to bash on them.

I can’t speak for all the others, of course, but I think you’re misunderstanding the ‘anti-bethesda’ talk. People dislike what Bethesda is now, and rather liked what they used to be, even loved it. Its just theres this frustration when a company like Bethesda essentially guts the good parts of their games when making new ones, when its so blindingly easy to see what they should have done, or where they could have gone. So easy to see that in fact it feels as if they should have seen it, and they can’t help but see it. Yet what do they do? They make skyrim, while admittedly a beautiful game, is sadly lacking in personality and depth. They gut the magic system, when they have a clear example of how it should work in their own game, morrowind. They gut the skill system, and remove the stats, until we’re barely able to call it an RPG. It simplifies it, sure, but it limits it as well. Its just depressing to see. I look at modern games in the same light as that recent study that came out proving scientifically that modern pop music is louder and more bland than older pop music. The same could probably be proven for modern RPGs, and maybe modern games in general.

The magic system in Morrowind was broken and silly. I always play a pure mage and I could get some enjoyment out of being a caster in MW only with the use of mods. The world is anything but lacking in depth, the lore is just as deep and intricate as it was in Morrowind. The supposed dumbing down is just a silly argument – attributes were supposed to govern your damage output and basic stats, while skills – how often you hit successfully. However since they moved away from dice rolls (which was a very good idea) attributes were superfluous, they all came down to increasing your mana, health or stamina. The only people that can actually say removing attributes is dumbing down are those that rely on the Luck attribute and how many exactly are there that did that?

Meanwhile, having major and minor skills was always a pretty stupid design by default, because you actually HAD to leave the skill you use the most OUT of your major and minor skills to get the 5x modifier. That’s just stupid beyond belief.

So the only thing we truly lost are birthsigns. YEah, I miss them, but I can live without them. Meanwhile, perks are a great idea.

The “problem with bethesda” is that they only make one game and just re-skin it. Fallout 3 is a Fallout flavoured TES game, and that works fine because the Fallout IP was making a transition from iso turnbased to first person, so there was a lot of room for bethesda to do it their way. Stalker on the other hand is already and open world first person game, and what we don’t need is a loss of variety by it also becoming another TES game + Flavour.
I have nothing against TES or bethesda, but while they are superb at making sandboxes, they are weak at RPGs (as years of the TES series has shown) and they are poor at FPS (or combat systems in general). So i’d like them to more or less stick to their IP rather than putting their design stamp on other existing IP.

How? The only FO game they’ve made in FO3. NV was made by Obsidian, it was only published by Bethesda, and it was far better then FO3. But both game were good. Heck FO NV had people from Black Isle working on it.

Turning a beloved franchise of turn-based tactical RPGs into another derp post-apocalyptic console shooter that basically didn’t really have much to do with its “Prequels” at all anymore?

I agree that New Vegas was better, but it was still a rather eh Shooter and it still used that horrible engine of theirs they like to use so much, and as we know they even screwed Obsidian out of fair payment…

This. No-one is claiming that beth makes actual BAD games, but they do love to use their gamebyro engine and make first person real time rpgs, which didn’t suit fallout and suits stalker even less amazingly, despite stalker being a first person real time RPG/FPS.

What the issue is beth taking the source material and just going with it, and ignoring the method of how that material came to be or was conveyed. #2, fallout 1 and 2 were incredible games. FO3? Good. Stalker? Incredible game. Beth version of stalker…? I can guess that it’s not going to follow the source formatting or be on par with it either from previous experience.

Have you even played Fallout 3? It’s nothing like any other game on any console. It is unique. The closest game to it would be Metro 2033, which didn’t come out until after the former had been released.

I’m guessing you’re one of the supposed “hardcore fans” still butthurt that it’s not a 1999-era top-down isometric game. I bet you also got butthurt when Mario 64 introduced a third dimension, thus “ruining classic side-scrolling gameplay.”

The fact is that, when Fallout came out, top-down isometric RPG’s were the apogee of technology for the genre. But it’s 2012, and technology has improved. It wasn’t the technology that made Fallout. It was the universe and the struggle for survival, along with the dark humor (although people seem to forget that this was much more a quality of the second game). The combat was also well done, but frankly I think Bethesda did as good a job bringing the limb-shooting aspect to a 3d, first-person game as they possibly could have. VATS works perfectly. It’s a truly innovative gameplay aspect and it deftly combines the old and the new.

We can argue whether Bethesda nailed the content of the universe. Personally, I think they did a decent job, although Obsidian did much better on this point. But you cannot deny that they nailed the atmosphere.

Which brings us back to STALKER. What made STALKER so great? It wasn’t the gameplay. It was buggy as hell when it came out, and only mods saved it. What made STALKER was the atmosphere. And despite their flaws, Bethesda know how to do atmosphere.

So no, I’m not worried. Bethesda will make a solid game. And if it sells well, maybe they’ll give it to Obsidian to make it even better.

Yes, I’ve played “Fallout 3” to my own detriment and it’s not “unique” at all, it’s literally Oblivion with guns and harkens back to the one game they can’t stop remaking every few years. Metro 2033 isn’t “close” to it since it is pretty straightforward plot railroading shooter with a good amount of time spent on characterization and details while Fallout 3 is a bunch of thrown together environments, including #Warehouse_01 and #Subway_Tunnel_01_02 which are cloned over and over to give the impression of a “big world” but rather triggered boredom in me.

Story, writing/characters/dialogue, a lot of the quests etc. were bad or non-existent like in most Bethesda games, it also has the same problem of broken AI, game and level-scaling systems present in most Bethesda-made games and VATS didn’t “work perfectly”, it was an invulnerable button one could press much too often, leading to over the top and totally unrealistic gore (not tastefully done like in Fallout 1, but just splatter) since the designers apparently thought their audience had a hard-on for that.

And no, no matter how many times you people would like to repeat that argument that it was the “lack of technology” and they “didn’t actually want to make a deep story and turn-based RPG, but a dumbed-down console shooter”, it remains wrong, as Wasteland 2, The Banner Saga, Dead State and other games prove to this day and at the time Fallout came out Doom, Quake and Duke Nukem were also already established names, they could have just “made that” if they really wanted…

Don’t start me on the “universe” or Bethesdas sense of “humor”…
To me Bethesda games kind of are to RPGs what Call of Duty games are to shooters.

Man, I love the old Fallouts and the amount of detail Black Isle had put into them but they have a goddawful combat system, even compared to the Beth ones. The hexes are confusing if you want to walk around, normal guns take at least 4 points to shoot (and that’s without the Fast Shot perk and targets), looking at your bag costs points, progression is incredibly slow on normal speed, especially the first game, etc. I could go on but goddamn, the combat’s just so terrible.

Though, it doesn’t mean everything else outside of it is terrible. Just the opposite.

Wow really? Tasteful gore? All of Fallout has been known for its over the top gore. Especially if you have the “Bloody Mess” perk. Bethesda will do fine. They did a very good job melding most of the ideas from the original Fallouts into a new format. To say they raped a franchise is wrong. They revived a DEAD franchise. There was no new Fallout (minus brotherhood of steel) being made. Simply put if they make Stalker they are unlikely to put it into any their old engines. They will do the series justice most likely. Stop Complaining.

If anyone fucked over the franchise, it was Interplay. Remember, their last Fallout game was Brotherhood of Steel (not to be confused with FO: Tactics) on the PS2, a game that had far, far less connection with ‘proper’ Fallout than anything Bethesda have done.

Here in Brazil we have a big TV channel that usually buy the rights for shows and put they at 4AM just to avoid other channels competition. I think it’s the same with Bethesda and STALKER. They already have Fallout and Rage…

Anyone want to explain to me why there’s so much hate towards Bethesda? I’ve loved almost every game they’ve ever made. Fallout 3 is perhaps my *Favorite* game ever. They do so much right. The settings and the quests are nearly perfect every time. There’s so much content, and there are so many ways to go about doing things and taking part in combat and not taking part in combat and exploring and everything. And such.

I just don’t get it. I spoke to someone yesterday on IRC about how they hated Skyrim, even though they’d played 200 hours of it. How can you hate a game and play it for nearly eight days of your life? That seems like a hell of a lot of entertainment for your money.

I can understand if you’d want the swordfighting to be something more like Dark Messiah, but I don’t think that would really fit the setting too well. I loved Dark Messiah (and I will probably love Dishonored) but the Elder Scrolls games and Fallout 3 were of a different breed entirely, and they were near-flawless gems of the open world genre. Don’t get me wrong – I love STALKER too, but I think that Bethesda is quite capable of making a decent open-world survival game at this point. Not to mention, it doesn’t mean that they’re going to make a STALKER game – they might get some other developers to do it, then publish it.

And you’re all going to hate me for saying this, but – at least Gamebryo/Creation engine isn’t as awful as Source.

Well, I like almost everything bethesda puts out, but I was disappointed with Oblivion and _hated_ fallout 3. Everything about that game was childish compared to original – tutorial (baby steps? High school drama? seriously?), quests, main story line (“oh, my father left me…”), character development (ending in superpower too easy, to quickly. Not that it matters – you could kill anything in-game anyway) , weapons (everyone had access to every weapon and could use nukes even with no character skill) NPCs.
Plus of course, no chess-like battles from original present. No humor from the same game.

Yay, i love tipping off good sites :3
He’s Ukrainian, btw. Not Russian
And as Galyonkin wrote here in the comments (and me in the email), Bethesda wants and can probably buy the rights for extended universe, but right now they have rights only for one game.

As long as Beth doesn’t force the irritation that is Gamebryo (or their “new” engine which happens to be the exact same) on us, I can really see something good coming from this. I doubt Beth would do this themselves though, for all you who fear Todd’s touch of genericness +5.

Far too many post-apoc games focus on the violence and lawlessness, more attention to survival within the new, possibly weird environments is a niche I thoroughly enjoyed.

The charm of Stalker is that it’s a Russian game from a Russian developer with a Russian perspective on an event that’s part of Russian culture. Strip away that unique national flavour then put it in the hands of a team of American white males and you end up with garbage.

No. Nationality has nothing to do with the things I like in the game (please don’t try and tell me what I like in the game). It could be set in an alternate America, and the game could still have the elements I like. The Artificial Life and the dangerous environment are not a ‘Ukrainian only’ thing. That minimal post-apocalyptic atmosphere is not unique to Ukraine. And everything American doesn’t have to be Hollywood AAA.

Also… I’m not sure if Ukrainians/Russians would agree that Ukraine/Russia are ‘close enough’ as to be indistinguishable from each other.

Please, set in in america, discard pripyat and the entire reality of the ghost city, remove the incredible ukranian environment, the lore, and everything that makes stalker brilliant. Also remove the entire iron curtain believeability of how any tests could happen without global knowledge, the entire suspicion of the government during the time, and poor life conditions, honestly I could go all day.

Ok, so you are Roger Locke in Johnson-ville USA where a massive government cover-up has left the entire area destroyed and mutated. Fight bandits and factions that all speak english and all live in modern american homes that they fortified using tools from the nearest home depot and radio shack, and try and figure out the mystery of what happened! Also, you’re a bullet sink and you have bullet time. Enjoy.

Edit: Also, please, tell me the last state-side game with the stalker type “rough and realistic” rather than “bloomy and shiny” visuals, practically insta death (to both player and AI), poor to no end, no-tutorial, incredible AI (both human and not) and realistic game there was. I honestly can’t think of ONE.

I think I see your problem in grasping what I am saying. I am not you, and you are not me. When I am talking about what I like in the STALKER games, I am not talking about what you like in the STALKER games. And when you talk about what you like in the STALKER games, they are not the reasons I like the STALKER games. You see? We’re different people, with different minds, different tastes, different likes and dislikes.

You also seem to think you can read my mind… trying to describe the game you think I’m thinking of when I think of STALKER 2, or a STALKER like game not set in Ukraine. You can’t, because that’s not the sort of game I’m thinking of.

Context, Unaco. Context. Pay particular attention to Pod’s first paragraph, specifically the final sentence about believability, government relations, and living conditions. You might not notice it, but I assure you it’s there, deep in the game’s core.

And I’m agreeing with you that AI and dangerous environment are very core to stalker, but let’s see beth’s track record with AI and danger?

Every beth game I can think of: AI is litrally dumber than animals in most games, at least those panic if I kill one of them. Dangerous environment? Yep, here, have no damage weapons and enemies have huge HP pools. Combat system also is an atrocity, so enjoy!

Edit: I’m agreeing with you unaco, but your faith in beth in those particular aspect is almost laughable.

You know what? I rarely ever mention this, because I think it’s counter-productive, but there is a massive amount of anti-americanism in these comments. Just a staggering amount. You’ve got a company that has a long, proven track record of producing good games, and yet everyone acts like the sky is falling. And if you cut through the rhetoric, it seems pretty clear that the reason why is that Bethesda are an American studio, and therefore must make a generic hollywood action game.

Being an American company does not mean you have to play Duke fucking Nukem. There is a wide variety of American game companies, just like there is a wide variety of Americans. Assuming that because an American studio is producing a game, that it has to jettison every shred of local culture, is simply an ignorant and ugly statement. It’s like saying that every film produced in America has to come out looking like Transformers. Not every film in America gets made in Hollywood, and not every
Hollywood film is ignorant and stereotypical.

And on the flip side, the fact that STALKER is Ukrainian is not why it’s good. Saying that it somehow reflects Ukrainian culture is equally ignorant. It’s a fictional game based on a Soviet film based on a real-life tragedy. And what Ukrainian culture it does reflect could have easily been sensitively created by a non-Ukrainian company that took the time to go to the area, research the history, read the background literature and talk to the locals. Shogun II, for instance, has a pretty solid take on Japanese feudal culture, but that doesn’t mean it had to have been made in Japan.

Don’t forget that “ignorant Americans” created much of the technology you use

This is coming from an American before you think I am just bashing our culture. But you can definitively taste the different culture when playing a well made game from another country.

American’s live in America which is very different from living in Poland or Russia or Japan. The world view is different, the outlook on life and the future is different. Not better or worse but different.

You can feel that difference in games like Metro and Stalker and Witcher. Not that Americans couldn’t have made games just as good mechanically/story-wise, they just wouldn’t have had the same feel and atmosphere if they didn’t come from their countries of origin.

Though I will say that it’s unbelievable that the American government would secretly test something horrible on it’s people, or neighbors, and then cover it up is laughable. I could see a Stalker two in the desert on some native reservation the government went a little too far in fucking with. But still I’d rather have some easterners continue on with this franchise.

@neo

I though rocket was an Aussie?

Also the zombie AI is shit and the graphics were there when he got started.

@Neonordnance – No-one is bashing Americans, no-one being taken seriously anyway, all they are saying is that Americans are not Ukrainians, I’m sure you can agree with that sentiment.

And as not-Ukrainians, Americans cannot make a game which rings the same cultural bells unless they have been immersed in Ukrainian culture for a significant period of time.

I’m British, watching an American try to “do” something culturally British is painful – the American office is a prime example. It’s good, very good, but it’s not The Office and it never ever could be. Look how close our cultures are, how similar we are and how many values we share, if we can’t even do each others cultures properly how are we supposed to do the culture of a people who aren’t as close to us as we are to each other?

We Brits for the most part love you guys, the diversity of your culture and everything you have brought to the world, no-ones really saying otherwise.

@neonordnance
I only see (in my opinion well founded) doubt that a major computer game company will be able to capture what was special in an Ukrainian game.
The only blanket statement about Americans in this thread is your own comment.

I live in 300 km(3hours by car) from Prypiat, but Ive got one question: I never played Modern Warfare, but I heard there is mission set there. What the hell military doing there? I mean even if all Ukraine and Belarus engulfed in war, there no going to be fights there because its pretty much small deserted town with no importance. Also, roads are broken and everything is devastated. And there no people beyond some old folk who left to live there. Its like attacking Britain and hawing large millitary operation at Stonenge, with snipers hiding among stones, military technic deployed and stuff. I mean Ukraine is largest country in Europe and if you want to fight there, have sniper fights in Carpathian mountains, fight with tanks in large fields and southern barrens, have urban fight in Kyiv or Sevastopol. Why fighting over small spot in the map?

It’s not that there was a war or anything, they posed it as a covert arms deal between two parties. Nothing substansial, just a couple of regimens of mercenaries, a few helicopters, but no war or territory battle or anything.

If I remember correctly, you’re talking about a hush-hush stealth mission in Call of Duty 4, the goal of which was to sneak past any enemy forces and assassinate one of the game’s villains who was hiding in the area. The mission made no less sense than the rest of the game’s campaign.

The charm of Stalker is that it’s a Russian game from a Russian developer with a Russian perspective on an event that’s part of Russian culture. Strip away that unique national flavour then put it in the hands of a team of American white males and you end up with garbage.”

It’s the ONLY engine they use. F3, Oblivion, skyrim, all based out of the same engine. Hell, I’m pretty sure they’ve been using it for 6 years plus now.

And even if they do make a new engine, they’ll make it just as modular and adaptive as gamebyro (aka, not really much but enough), it will completely ruin the entire stalker atmospheric gameplay and environments.

To me, this is like taking ARMA and throwing it in the CoD engine. AKA: Massacring it.

Longer than that even PodX140; it’s Morrowind’s engine. Morrowind was released in 2002 and Dark Age of Camelot used the same engine in 2001.
Sure, there have been updates to the engine, but they’ve been nowhere near as worthy as the changes between different id Tech releases or Unreal Engine releases.
Even better, the people who make Gamebryo went bust in 2010. The tech was then acquired later that year by another company.
It boggles my mind that Bethesda outright lied about the engine in Skyrim being a different one to that used in Oblivion / Fallout 3 / New Vegas and got away with it.

What boggles my mind is that they now have access to id tech and still haven’t done anything with it outside of RAGE. The technology behind id tech 5 could easily be adapted for TES games and would make such a prettier game than the frankly subpar results Gamebryo gives.

What Todd Howard said was that they rewrote such big chunks of Gamebryo that in the end they felt it was almost like a new engine. Not from scratch, but that’s beside the point. So they never lied about anything, you lied to yourself.

But everything starts from the game Shadow of Chernobyl, so that is good enough for us.

Plus, over the years dozens of Stalker novels being published already and not a single one being translated in English. I no longer give a crap on other works of the franchise. They just dont care to bring those works out of Russia / Ukraine / Germany. (As I know, many of Stalker novels are in German, I dont know why).

One sad thing though, the original dev team’s hard work on original STALKER 2 may all be wasted and everything has to be start over again. That says we may need to wait for another two good years for the game……

Honestly, I can’t see how obsidian could make a proper stalker game. It’s a bit out of their league and expertise IMO.

Hell, the only reason GSC could do it is by compromising insane amounts of time and polish to get the game out of the door, and they really lucked out that it worked. Obsidian just don’t have the experience.

I agree, I just think Obsidian will do the best of what is almost certainly going to be a disappointment to the vast majority of people who are invested in the series. That said, I’m happy that the original team are still making a spiritual successor to the STALKER games.

I mean, they don’t have the eastern european pedigree, they haven’t made any incredibly atmospheric game to date, nor any pure FPS with extreme difficulty and incredible AI, nor have they made any horror game either.

They make amazing games, make no doubt about it, but they honestly aren’t suited, nor are any other game developer that I can think of off the top of my head. Maybe 1C could find someone, but that would be the only other publisher I would trust with stalker.

“they haven’t made any incredibly atmospheric game to date, nor any pure FPS with extreme difficulty and incredible AI, nor have they made any horror game either.”

To be fair before Stalker, neither had GSC.

I know where you’re coming from though and I agree with you. My position is simply that if it comes down to Bethesda or Obsidian developing, I’d much much much much much much much much prefer Obsidian to take the reins.

Better yet will be the complete horrible stereotyping with all characters named boris or Yuri, and horrid accents everywhere. Oh, and remove all the amazing native voice acting because no-one likes not understanding stuff that actually adds insane immersion to the game, right? The player MUST KNOW ALL.

Fair play to them (Bethesda & Sergei Grigorovich). Hopefully from this we’ll actually get a STALKER 2. They brought Fallout back to us after all. I could actually even see a STALKER game fitting quite nicely with Beth’s vignette/visual/minimalist story telling.

But they didn’t bring fallout back to us. What they did was a good re-imagining of the fallout universe and assets, but they most certainly did not give a fallout.

Do you really want a mainstream stalker? What absolutely amazing things are there in the zone? Psuedodogs? Anomalies? Duty/Freedom? The only reason the universe works is because of the absolute incredible atmosphere generated by the engine, and beth 100% would not use it, ruining the entire thing.

To me, if they do make a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game, I’ll be even more broken then when they bastardized fallout.

Dunno… Playing New Vegas myself, currently, and it feels pretty damn close to the original FO games to me. And does Beth make ‘mainstream’ games, or are Beth games ‘mainstream’ because they’re good? Like I say, hopefully we’ll see a STALKER 2 from this… I like Beth and the TES games, I like what they did with the FO franchise, I’m gonna be optimistic and assume they’ll do a good job with this.

I loved NV but Bethesda didn’t write it and it was ‘too American’ in a way. The story of F3 was boring for me. I cannot see them doing anything worthwhile with STALKER, they will just create simplistic bland stories with none of the atmosphere. The best thing they could do is throw a ton of money to 4A and let them make something out of STALKER.

Who said Beth wrote NV? I didn’t. But they were responsible for it. Without Beth, Obsidian wouldn’t have made NV. Also… how is it ‘too American’ and what does that have to do with STALKER or them making STALKER?

I can see Beth doing something worthwhile with the STALKER series… as I said, their minimalist, almost vignette like approach to storytelling would fit in quite well with STALKER.

Yes they did make it possible and NV was really good. ‘Too american’ was not meant as an insult, I just meant that it dealt with specific cultural themes that they are knowledgeable about and managed to integrate them well in the game. I cannot see them having the same success with STALKER which comes from a different cultural background, with different themes, a different setting/mood/atmosphere. Let’s not forget also that STALKER was aimed at a different audience as well.

Sorry, I should have clarified by mainstream: Everything explained to the player, no danger, everything is english, the writing is for the intelligence of an 8 year old, and it doesn’t have the soul that a dedicated developer has.

My current desktop background is my screenshot folder from steam from CoP, raw and unedited. If I did that with any beth game I would grimace. With these, I can feel the atmosphere and raw emotion in them despite the static images.

NV felt like old Fallout and leagues ahead of Fallout 3 because Obsidian made it, not Bethesda. New Vegas’ weakest facet was the hobbled version of Gamebryo Bethesda have been shoving down our throats for 10 years, and continute to do.

By all means, skyrim was quite good, but it really boiled down to the same thing every time : Go to this dungeon, fight these dragur, here’s some loot. Not to mention the various bugs, mainstream gameplay, HORRID combat system, and little actual atmosphere from the engine (environmental wise, the lore and universe really did enrich the atmosphere a LOT, I’ll say that).

The best part about skyrim was the exploration and huge expanse, but you do that with stalker and it completely breaks the suspension of disbelief and suddenly it all goes poof.

Bethesda does well because it’s the only AAA creator of open world games, but every single one of the company’s releases has terrible combat, unbelievably stilted animations, and generic writing. I’m OK with bugs and other temporary issues that can be patched out later, but every Bethesda game has had serious flaws in the same areas over and over. I had hoped Skyrim would change the pattern but I was wrong. There are Bethesda careerists working on those areas of each game (animators, writers, etc.) who are basically incompetent. It’s ultimately the leadership’s fault for signing off on the crap, but that’s easy to do when you’re raking in cash because other parts of the game (atmosphere, exploration) are awesome.

If Beth were to make a STALKER game I’m 100% certain that the shooter/action mechanics would be total fucking trash. Fallout forces me to question whether any senior employees at Bethesda have ever enjoyed a AAA shooter.

They make big, pretty games that give the player lots of freedom and have a bunch of systems that mesh together to give some semblance of a living world. The moment to moment gameplay is incredibly dull, the content that fills those worlds are uninteresting parcels of filler that rarely interact with each other and they’re full of simple, badly written NPCs. The most memorable one from Skyrim was the first companion you get and that was because she had an amusingly passive aggressive line whenever you asked her to carry crap for you.

There’s an old saying; “everything is better with co-op.” Even a shit game can be fun to play if you’re dicking around with friends. Just look at Daikatana. It’s the same case with player agency; give people the ability to wonder off and do whatever and they’ll entertain themselves for dozens of hours. You don’t actually need to craft quality content, just a big enough world full of enough half-baked stuff for them to endlessly distract themselves with. New Vegas was good because it did that but had content worth a damn in it, even if it was burdened down by the same clunky, crap combat system that Fallout 3 had (if somewhat improved). Skyrim and its predecessors have an abundance of content but little in terms of actual quality.

I haven’t heard of one game they’ve made in the past 10 years that isn’t all of the above:

Super easy, incredibly hand-holding, horrible combat, predictable and trite writing, and the main character is always the hero who can do no wrong.

Sure, they can make any sort of game, so long as it follows these *minor* flaws (sarcastic emphasis on minor)

I loved skyrim as much as the next guy, but I do NOT want them to come close to a franchise that was built on difficulty, incredible combat mechanics and AI, mystery, ukranian culture, Chernobyl, and atmosphere.

I get what you mean dude but the Stalker franchise was never that “pure” as you are implying, remember the horrid voice acting of Call of Pripyat, I love all three games but they all had their share of dubious design decisions, as did all games under the banner of Bethesda.

There are two ways someone could interpret this situation, on one hand that Bethesda is trying to monopolize the market to have the rights of the best immersive post apocaliptic open world shooter RPGs out there, and on the other that they are willing to take risks, as proven by their track record (Call of Cthulhu, Brink and their newest addition, Dishonored), and move some genres forwards in the mainstream side of the industry.

There will be mistakes, but only then will we know if the cons out way the pros of this sequel/spin off, so have faith, I rather have the IP on their hands then say EA or Activision.

Just to add that Bethesda has a SINGLE team, just one. They, and by they I mean Todd Howard, don’t believe in fractioning the studio. So if Beth get Stalker and decide to make Stalker, everyone will be working on it. Just sayin’

I can’t wait for Bethesda to ruin another game franchise. They can’t make a good Fallout game, what makes them think they can make a good STALKER game? Hell, they can’t even make a good Elder Scrolls game.

But I’m always confused when people point out that something is just my opinion. As you said, obviously it is. It’s like they want to append IMO to everything or it might be mistaken as hallowed fact. I’d argue that it’s implicitly my opinion and I don’t need to say that at every turn.

Because on the internet, enough people like to speak for the general population that sometimes you just want to head off arguments by saying “In my opinion”. Or at least have the high ground when someone responds that you don’t speak for everyone, because you’ve already made a point of saying it was your opinion.

I think it is kind of similar to how people sometimes feel the need to identify their own sarcastic remarks. Because you know there will be people who will think you are dead serious, no matter what you say. (Admittedly, I think *that* happens because there are people who will dead seriously say and/or agree with anything you can sarcastically say, particularly online.)

The sarcasm part I can understand, as that can be hard to convey in text.

I guess the reason I get caught off guard is that I just assume that anything I say, unless I say otherwise, is my own opinion. That seems to be the most efficient way to go about it, as 90% of the time that’s just what I’m doing.

It’s his business and he can damn well do what he wants with it. You couldn’t give a shit about those employees, you only care about your game that isn’t going to get made so don’t try the nobility card.

Let me put a proposition to you. I want you to make a game. I want you to get a couple of millions in a loan and hire a studio of 20 people and I want you to make a game about a lemon with x-ray vision.

Well… do it then, because obviously I have the right to dictate to you exactly what you should do with your business.

Not going to do it, well I’m going to bitch and moan about you then because you are clearly greedy. You could get that loan and employ those people and it would be the noble thing to do to provide jobs. But you don’t want to risk millions? Well that’s just you being a twat, always thinking of your own wallet and not going bankrupt.

Honestly, in what way could this be a good thing? We’ll get another “remake” of an amazing genre, it will handle the exact same as all the other beth games, and we will never see another proper stalker game again.

Sheng: before fallout 3, I’d be happy to say sure, I’ll do that. But now I can’t even discuss fallout with anyone without everyone instantly thinking I’m referring to fallout 3 or NV and not understanding the actual lore of the world. They think t he lore is what beth wrote and by now it IS because of all the people that subscribe to it.

I don’t want in 5 years time for me to be talking about stalker and have to explain what the hell a true snork is or who Strelok (the orginal as for all we know they’ll just make another Strelok (like the vault dweller in FO2)) was. I want to be able to say “oh, here, let me show you this game that you haven’t heard of and aren’t sick of,” rather than being immediately judged because people associate stalker with dumbed down combat, easy difficulty, and explosions of blood.

Don’t believe me? Say you like fallout on various forums. See what you’re replied with.

The GECK went from a survival kit meant to help vault dwellers rebuild society to a macguffin that purifies water that, for whatever reason, nobody thought to use until the events of FO3
This is pretty much the biggest and most obvious one, and it really doesn’t help that the story only goes downhill from the point where the player hears about it (culminating in that atrocious ending that only a DLC purchase can fix)

DC is actually worse off than California was at the start of Fallout, despite having better resources, more habitable areas (read: not a desert) etc.
This switch from “We’re actually rebuilding society! Awesome” to “Everything is ruined and pretty much everyone is needlessly unfriendly” made the game feel more like it was a reboot than a sequel.

While it’s not technically an inconsistency (midwest brotherhood lololol) the transition of the BoS from misanthropic technology preservers to wasteland knights made them terribly boring.
The super mutants needlessly suffered similar treatment (remnants of a supremacist army to slightly beefier bandits that drag people off to conveniently placed FEV sites, though at least they got something out of that). FO3 didn’t add in any new factions, and the ones they included from the older titles felt shoehorned in.

I also have to say that the New Vegas treatment of the Super Mutants felt far more natural than the FO3 one. Forming societies of their own under the guidance of the more intelligent muties seems a lot more feasible than randomly dragging off people to mutilate or convert without any proper guidance or end goal.

Also, I only really got around to playing the first two games after FO3. My previous copy of Fallout didn’t work so well on my computer (funky colours, screen often went completely black etc.)

You guys know that Bethesda is a publisher not just a developer? You know they are the publisher of Dishonored, one of the most interesting upcoming games? It is very unlikely that if they decide to do STALKER that it will be done in-house? Who knows they might even contract it to some of the original developers.

Actually, if you read the RPS coverage, dishonored turns out to be a very predictable and normal FPS.

#2, they publish american made games. Try telling American developers to make a Ukrainian game. Or British developers making a Chinese game. Or any culture to imitate another culture. It never works and it always ends up either looking offensive or losing its soul in the process.

EDIT: I admit I was wrong about dishonored, I can’t remember why I felt it left a really sour taste in my mouth after reading the hands on. Re-skimming it seemed to be very interesting though, so I do apologize for that.

Really? The last article I read about dishonored it looked to be anything a typical FPS. Perhaps that was a pc gamer article though I thought I read it here. Anyway that conclusion is most definitely wrong from the gameplay I have seen. That is of course unless you consider a a FPS that mixes elements of Theif and deus ex typical…

To be honest, Dishonored isn’t ‘typical’. But I can’t tell if it’s original either. It’s borrowing elements from HL2, Mirror’s Edge, Thief, Bioshock, Deus Ex, god knows what else. It’s like the devs wanted to evoke every single successful game from the past 10 years, and I still don’t know if it’s a good thing. That might just be the Bioshock-reflux, though.

Now that you mention it, STALKER multiplayer by GSC is the one of the crappiest, yet it is associated with one of the most outstanding singleplayer shooter – not just the sandbox gameplay but also the projectile mechanism.

Maybe STALKER multiplayer is where Bethesda can bring us new hope…… Of course, dont bring the arcade style shooter of COD to STALKER please.

This is either good news or really really bad news, before FO3 came out and when information was a bit sparse I dubbed it “Mr STALKER goes to Washington”. While this is a concept I want to see, I can’t honestly say that Bethesda are equipped to do something like this based on their track record.

I will admit to not ebing as broken up as some people though. I love both Bethesda’s Fallouts and the old Fallouts, I also love STALKER. I can live with some amalgamation of the three, maybe Bethsoft can buy the Metro2033 studio too and they can just spuff Nuclear Apocalypse joy everywhere….or ruin 3 good game series in one fell swoop.

I kind of do wonder if buying STALKER as a franchise is more to stop anyone else getting it and making a competing product…Bethesda already own a very storied and well known Nuclear Apocalypse franchise, do they really need another?

I wondered that too, but I assume there is a clause in the contract that requires them to make a Stalker game at certain point, or they will lose the license. Kinda like Interplay with their Fallout MMO.

Really REALLY hope, they don’t decide to “modernize” the style and game play towards something more along the lines of Metro Last Light, don’t add ideas Bethesda, just try to make the best, a more polish, most atmospheric and final but more crucial to all this, the most tactical post apocalyptic open world shooter RPG game out there.

Oh, and take away the god damn ammo pool system once and for all, and add a realistic magazine system like Arma and such.

Don’t hold your breath. If you look at Bethesda’s overall line-up, only a handful of their titles support modding. Apart from in-house developed games from the Elder Scrolls and Fallout series (Obsidian’s Fallout: New Vegas was basically a mod of Fallout 3’s engine), none of their externally developed games (Wet, Rage, Brink, Hunted, etc.) are easily moddable.

My mistake then, sorry. I forgot mods are always about filling a game with half dressed Anime girls, and that they’re forced on everyone that owns the game. They’re not an optional and vastly varied thing that allow you to tailor your own game to your own tastes, or share small (or large) creative moments with others. What a dummy I was thinking that… that they were about how an individual wants their game to be.

For the 800 millionth time, Bethesda the publisher isn’t the same thing as Bethesda Game Studios.

Right now we now nothing except that there’s a rumor that Bethesda is going to publish a STALKER game. For all we know, Id is making it. Or Arkane. Or maybe they’ve secretly worked out a deal with former GSC people.

Really doubt it. The reason they split from GSC was because of Shadow of Chernobyl’s hellish development cycle and the sheer difficulty of developing an open world game with an inexperienced team. Basically they don’t want to make open-world games again.

People seem really quick to forget how much of a nightmare STALKER was to even get out the door. It came very close to not happening at all, and only got released after some drastic changes to the initial plans. It wasn’t just an unsustainable development model, it was a miracle it ever made it at all. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t far off slipping completely away into development hell at several points.

That’s what I was thinking. I guess some people just love to hate. I mean it could be worse they could have sold it to EA ot Activision then you guys would have a real reason to complain. Bethesda will do a good job and they also love supporting the mod community. Stalker and steam workshop is a match made in heaven. Sometimes the internet baffels me. This could have been a lot worse. Call of STALKER : Warface anyone?

Beth does not have the experience nor the proper culture (eastern european) to make this game. They’re style of game is also VASTLY different to stalker, and many of their games’ core values directly conflict with stalker’s. Eg. Tutorials, extreme difficulty, amazing AI, small but rich environments, extremely hostile and DEADLY world, non-english voice/text, and a horror/fear based atmosphere.

Bethesda having the rights to publish a STALKER game (maybe) isn’t the same thing as Bethesda Game Studios making a STALKER game. I’d imagine BSG have their hands full working on Skyrim DLC and Fallout 4, anyway.

Press V to pause time, then watch the monster’s head explode into a flurry of bullets and cash, then proceed to open a nearby chest to break the game while masked men shouting slurs in Russian casually shoot mutants around you and the text LEVEL UP! appears on screen.

As a Ukrainian, and a long-time fan of GSC (think Cossacks-time), I’m disheartened.

Unless Beth gets an Eastern European team to do this, it won’t be S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

quite simply, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was a post-soviet game. Built in post-soviet mentality. With a post-Soviet attitude. And here’s the main thing–IT IS DEPRESSING. it’s meant to be. because that actively reflects the realities of life. Stalkers are not in the Zone because it’s fun. They are there, because the life outside the Zone is bleak, and hopeless, and the only way they can make somehting of their lives is by taking huge risks, to potentially hit it big with artefacts and be able to provide for their families.

and THAT is the biggest problem. Bethesda makes decent open-world games. those games are roller-coasters, or amusement parks, whatever you want to call them. People live in them, because they have no choice. THe world is like that.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is NOT like that. it’s NOT an amusement park. The Zone is cruel, it cheats, and it wants to kill you. Every human being you meet has a choice–they don’t have to be there, but they choose to be there. The player knows it. and every NPC knows this. The Zone doesn’t want you there.

ANd that’s the problem. Xenimax as a publisher can’t invest in a game where the game world DOES NOT WANT THE PLAYER TO BE THERE. Becuase their audience lives in a world of optimism. And what S.T.A.L.K.E.R revels in is a world that’s complete opposite. And if these players encounter a game that doesn’t want them in it… the game won’t sell.

And this is just the general “tone” of the world. I’m not gonna bother going into details about such things as the actual environment, the langauage of the builidng signs, the jokes Stalker say to each other, the fact that different factions speak different versions of Russian, Ukrainian and a creole mix of the two, locally known as “surzhyk”, etc.

I’m not sure anyone other than Ukrainians can do the Zone right. simply because it’s a national stigma of a sort. It’s part of everyday life. The desolation of Chornobyl is not confined to the Zone–when the Union collapsed, entire industries ground to a halt, and abandoned plants and near-empty “factory towns’ are not exclusive to the Zone either. S.T.A.L.K.E.R is about more that just an ecological disster–it shows the breakdown of society as a result of that same disaster.

Exactly. Games like STALKER to me embody this post-USSR/CCCP cynical and fatalist air you get from the former Soviet states as opposed to an atmosphere of optimism western Post-Apocalyptic games tend to have. I remember this one photo of the real-life zone of a propaganda poster in a kindergarten that read: “Today we are chicks. Tomorrow, we are Soviets!”

At least we have developers like Ice Pick Lodge and games like Cradle that harken back to Russian surrealist literature like Anton Chekhov and Maximillian Voloshin for Eastern European oddities.

The negative comments here might’ve been kneejerk responses before Skyrim came out, but now that Bethesda has released 3 games plus expansions with the same flaws each time, it’s hard not to be skeptical about their future efforts. Hopefully Obsidian or another studio will end up making STALKER 2.

Has anyone seen how different games from the “east” are from the “west”?

I mean, generally speaking, all the latest games from the west (from France to the left) are in someway or another:
-Short.
-Well done (in comparison) at release. Bugs may or may not be fixed
-More focus on MP
-Not requiring huge amounts of Hardware (at the time of release)
-More marketed towards the common gamer than the hardcore one.
-Recycled gameplay mechanics.

While, the east ones (from Germany to the right) are totally the opposite
-Long
-A clusterfuck of errors which WILL be later addresed no matter what (Men Of War, STALKER, Jagged Alliance BIA, Cossacks, 7.62, ARMA Cold War Assault (Which is now Op.Flashpoint with a spy mask), SeaDogs/AgeOfPirates all had their patches after release)
-Mostly/Totally single player. (ARMA totally averted this)
-At the time of release, you need a NASA Computer to run it. Even if you have it, it will feel laggy.
-Totally hardcore, no doubt. Some will include “softcore” options for the common gamer.
-Always inovating. Check each sequel from each game and you’ll see they managed, somehow, to throw in something new. (ARMA and STALKER are most obvious ones)

That’s why I love eastern devs. They may make ugly-as-fuck dev’d games, but beneath that pile of crap, lies a gem.

If STALKER 2 Had came out, I believe it would have been one of the best FPS/RPG open world ever made. If you follow on the dev’mp from ShOC, thru CS to COP, you’ll see the GSC guys were always improving on all the areas of the game. Be it graphics, gameplay, story, atmosphere, missions (COP gets a special prize for having the best missions I’ve ever seen in FPS)

But, being in hands of a “west” dev, and knowing past titles, it is OBVIOUS they’ll milk the franchise to death.

EDIT: If somehow, Bethesda manages to land it’s hands on the XRAY engine, then something might come out of it.
Like the Source engine, that engine has….it’s “feel”.

In addition, i’d like to expand on the “hardcore” aspect–Eastern games don’t believe in handholding. simply due to the fact that for the devs and their primary target audience, PC is expected to be the platform everyone is used to. Consoles are a secondary market.

Therefore, there are little to no concerns over “accessibility” and the learning curve.

Alternately, seeing as their games are often released in a just-about functional state, they simply don’t have the time or funding for that kind of extra polish. I’m not sure if it’s a conscious choice, maybe more a victim of circumstance.

I present to you The Witcher 2, as an example of a “AAA Eastern Game”, and a valid counter-point.

despite having the funding, and ample time, the game’s tone is still fairly bleak. And people still complain about it being needlessly complicated, even after the Enhanced Edition, and, before that, version 2.0 which introduced a proper tutorial.